Wednesday, November 2, 2016

I LOST MY NASCAR VIRGINITY IN JUST ABOUT THE BIGGEST WAY POSSIBLE. I have always wanted to see a NASCAR race, and while a few events on the Sprint Cup calendar are within driving distance of Toronto, I knew that thanks to liquor laws in most of Canada, I'd hold my breath forever if I wanted to see a race on this side of the border.

I'd furtively plotted out potential NASCAR day trips to Michigan or Watkins Glen, or a pilgrimage to Indianapolis, but at the end of this spring my wildest dreams were surpassed when a travel gig started coming together that would put me in the infield at Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway for a whole race weekend.

The first thing that struck me about Talladega was the scale, with the infield seeming to stretch out forever, with paddocks and garages, support buildings, a whole road course and several RV campgrounds contained within the tri-oval. After the scale, it's the precision and organization that blew my mind, especially when I came across the parking lot for the transporters, with its long line of identical blue Peterbilts.

I was given a pass that was virtually all access, so I could wander the place at will, from the hardcore partiers on Talladega Boulevard to Pit Road. The U.S. elections were halfway throug their final bitter month when I arrived, and it wasn't surprising that NASCAR isn't exactly a hotbed of Hillary supporters.

My biggest thrill was hearing that Bobby and Donnie Allison were the honorary grand marshall and starter of the race. These were, of course, the men that tussled with Cale Yarborough at the end of the legendary 1979 Daytona 500 that was probably the genesis of NASCAR's wild explosion in popularity, so I had to hurry away fromthe driver's meeting before the race on Sunday to shoot them signing books, hats, t-shirts and die-cast cars for fans.

The most striking moment was the calm before the big race, where fans, crew, drivers and their families all mingled on Pit Road, and where you can see something like a willowy driver's wife in a flowing dress playing with her son on the grass between the pits and the start/finish straight.

Wheel and jack men stretched and did calisthenics while the giants who hefted the fuel bowsers basked like mighty beasts before a stampede. Drivers looked as tense as you'd expect them too, conferring with crew chiefs and engineers in little pockets of logo-covered uniforms.

The big revelation was how hard it is to shoot a NASCAR race. Towers for photographers are helpfully provided near the corners of the track, but photo holes were difficult to find, and the holy grail shot I wanted - a pack of cars hugging the steep banking, compressed into one tight composition by a telephoto lens - seemed impossible to shoot. It was easy to understand when I studied the fencing alongside the track, and realized how heavy these cars are, and the force at which they'd hit the walls in a big crash. I felt spoiled by shooting street courses, though.

The race was completely different in the stands, where the cars roared past on the long front straight just feet away from the crowd. My backup shot - a decent shot of a pit stop - was much easier to get, especially when a couple of cars had wrecked and their crews quickly packed up and left their pit boxes empty for anyone with a hot pass to stand in for the rest of the race.

Joey Logano ended up winning the race, which almost ended under a safety car, and was criticized by some grumbling about the "take it easy" strategy of the Joe Gibbs team, who ran in a little pack just behind the rest of the cars for most of the day. It was frankly almost impossible to follow as I trekked from the infield to the stands and back to the pits under the bright sun all afternoon, but despite the blur of sensations, I can say that I popped my NASCAR cherry in style.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

THE HONDA INDY TOOK OVER THE EXHIBITION GROUNDS and Lakeshore Road again last weekend, with a full
card of support races that included the return of NASCAR to Toronto after five
years. Australia’s Will Power was the winner at the end of the weekend, while
last year’s winner, Josef Newgarden, crashed on lap 58, right in front of where
I was taking pictures.

It only looks like a
race weekend like the Honda Indy is about the cars, but there are hundreds of
people working flat out behind the wheel, in the paddocks and in the pits. I
talked to eight of them, asking them about everything from the changes made to
the track this year to how women are making their way into motorsport to the
future of racing beyond the internal combustion engine and why NASCAR isn’t
bigger in Canada.

Markham-born Daniel
Morad was the only driver who competed in two different series during the Honda
Indy weekend, racing in the Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup series and accepting a
last minute invitation to fill a seat in the NASCAR Pinty’s Series. Morad
finished seventh in the NASCAR stock car and came first in the Porsche on
Saturday and second on Sunday.

“The team owner gave me a ring on
Friday morning - I was still in bed at that point - and he said go get your
medical forms taken care of from NASCAR. Luckily I have a doctor who can take
care of that really quickly. I probably set record time going to the doctor's
offices and back to make it in the car in time."

"I
literally went from the doctor's office to my race seat and practice, my first
time ever in a NASCAR. I'm really excited to race in this series - rubbin's
racing they say, and you're allowed to do it, whereas in the Porsche you're
supposed to keep it nice and pristine. It's beautiful German engineering and
the car is fantastic to drive. Two contrasting types of cars - one's trying to
murder you out there and the other drives like a dream."

Jean-Francois
Dumoulin (left) and his brother Louis-Philippe Dumoulin (right) are from
Trois-Rivieres, Quebec and compete against each other in the NASCAR Pinty’s
Series. They talked about the changes to the Toronto track and what’s needed to
make NASCAR bigger in Canada. Louis-Philippe finished fourth and Jean-Francois
finished tenth at the end of Saturday’s race.

L.P.
Dumoulin: “It's a great circuit - fast corners, slow corners, you're right
between walls. We're used to it because we're from another street circuit, so
it's a great place. They did some changes this year. I really liked the older
configuration. This one is alright - we'll so how it goes during the race.
Visually there's a lot of distractions - lights and posts and fences and you
really have to pick your reference points quickly."

J.F.
Dumoulin: “I think the social media is a big thing now. NASCAR needs to be
stronger on that and on live TV. Because we have TV but it's hard to see it
because it's a week after - when it's happening people are more willing to
watch it."

Sara Price was the
first woman to drive in the Stadium Super Trucks series, a big fan favorite in
Toronto since it first raced here in 2013. Price, a 23-year-old motocross racer
from California, led for the first three laps of Sunday’s race and ended up
finishing ninth when her brakes began to fail.

“I think in today's society a lot
of women are coming up and a lot of girls are getting empowered and having
their own voice. Obviously it takes a strong, independent girl to stick around
the guys, and a lot of guys are looking at the women and giving them a lot of
respect because they're looking at them as just another racer in another
colour, not just a female. I think that's awesome and a lot of women should get
into it because when you're in it it's amazing."

Scarborough-raised
Neil Campbell is a mechanic working for Andretti Motorsports, with 25 years of
experience in the business. He’s part of Marco Andretti’s Indycar crew;
Andretti finished tenth.

“Those
Formula E electric cars, they're going to be the future. In ten years you're
going to see everything in that formula, and you can see how amazing that
racing is, and I think we're heading that way. Especially with Andretti being
part of Formula E in the next few years you're going to see the Indycars going
that way as well, it just depends on the costs - one the costs go down in our
development with Formula E, when we get a hang on that, we'll start doing that
on IndyCar as well."

Alexander
Rossi is in his rookie season in Indycar, but he’s a veteran of several
international racing series, including Formula 1, where he’s still a reserve
driver for Manor Racing. He was the winner of this year’s Indianapolis 500
after starting eleventh, the first rookie to win the race since 2001.

“I think
initially there was a lot of shock related to it, because I couldn't fully
process it. And then as the weeks went on it was very difficult to come to the
realization that you've won because we had Detroit after that and Texas right
after that. So it took about a month for it to settle in, and it was a very
special thing for me to be an American who was able to win the 100th running
and to be able to do it for Honda. After what was such a difficult year last
year, it was such a tremendous privilege and honour."

Kate Gundlach is an
assistant race engineer for Chip Ganassi Racing, where she works on the timing
stand in pit lane on driver Charlie Kimball’s team. She grew up around her
father’s vintage motorcycle racing team and has a mechanical engineering degree
from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Toronto is extremely difficult,
considering it's a street circuit and there's a lot that's not under our
control - there are bumps, pavement changes, weather, pedestrian traffic that
makes it unpredictable. It's hard to manage, and when you watch these cars go
around the track in videos there's at least one tire off the ground at all
times. It's tough for them to be within half a second of each other across the
whole field - it's pretty impressive.”

Simon
Pagenaud was the points leader going into the Honda Indy weekend in Toronto,
and despite only finishing ninth, he retained his lead of 47 points over Will
Power. He raced at Le Mans before joining Indycar in 2011 and is known for his
obsession with the technical side of racing.

“The car
is good. We're going to make some slight adjustments. It's been a good weekend.
We have a new layout here that I enjoy, personally. People always complain
about changes I guess, but I'm the opposite way. I like changes, I think it
makes it more challenging, and it shows the driver's skills more to the fans.
When the fans come to the racetrack they want to see a car sliding, they want
to see a narrow track, they want to see action, and I think we're providing
that with this new layout and I'm excited about it."